Have you ever looked up at the sky, at dawn or dusk, and seen a bright spot moving swiftly across the sky? It's not a new star shifting out of sequence. Chances are you just saw the International Space Station (ISS).

At 357 feet end-to-end, the ISS is a football field-sized orbital microgravity, solar-powered research laboratory, training facility, and observatory. It travels at 17,500mph, 250 miles above our heads, and orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. If its hard to imagine how fast that is, an airplanes top speed is 575mph.

Contrary to popular belief, the ISS is not the first place humans have ever lived outside of planet Earth (that was NASAs Skylab(Opens in a new window), which orbited the Earth from 1973-1979), but it's a crucial stepping stone toward human space exploration, and our species future habitats on other planets.

If you want to know how to track the ISS, weve got you covered. Here's how to check out NASAs interactive map and sign up for email or text alerts to know the best time to look up.

If you want to track the ISS from home, go to Spot The Station(Opens in a new window) and use the interactive map to find sighting opportunities in your area. There is also the Live Space Station Tracking Map(Opens in a new window), which shows the physical location of the satellite over the Earth.

Potential sightings are marked by blue pins on the map. I live in Los Angeles, so the nearest blue pin on the map is to the Northeast of the city, high up in the San Gabriel Mountains, at Mount Baldy.

Sighting Location map(Credit: Spot the Station)

You can select a blue pin and click the View sighting opportunities link to see when the ISS could be seen from that spot. The data is precise, showing the exact day, time, elevation, and duration of ISS sighting in minutes. NASA also provides links to share each potential sighting occasion via Facebook and Twitter.

All sightings will occur within a few hours before or after sunrise or sunset. This is the optimal viewing period as the sun reflects off the space station and contrasts against the darker sky. Before heading out to any single spot, it should be noted that the ISS needs to be at an elevation of above 40 degrees from the horizon in the nights sky or you wont see anything.

You can also sign up for alerts(Opens in a new window). Click the Sign Up button in the Heads Up Alerts section, and enter your general location by selecting a blue pin on the map and clicking Sign up for this location.

Choose if you want email or text notifications, then enter your email address or mobile carrier and number. Choose whether you want AM or PM alert times, check the boxes so you can agree to the terms, and click Submit. NASA requires a double opt-in to their alerts service. Once you provide the information above, you will receive an 8-digit code (so keep an eye out for it).

Once your code arrives, return to the sign up page and look to the Enter your Code section on the right of the screen. Enter your email or number, and add the code you were sent. Click Process Code to complete the registration process.

The site will then confirm your alerts are active. Check that all the data is correct, with your preferred location (i.e. mine is Mount Baldy as thats the closest one to Los Angeles). This page will also give you the current months sighting options, in your local time zone.

NASA will then notify you when the ISS is in your area and within optimal viewing conditions.

If you opted to receive emails, dont forget to add [emailprotected] to your contacts so you can avoid the notifications slipping into your spam folder. Your alerts will continue to ping your phone or inbox for a year. After that, you will need to sign up again.

The seven-member crew of Expedition 68(Credit: NASA)

Whats life like aboard the ISS? We interviewed astronaut Nicole Stott in 2018 during the press tour for NatGeos One Strange Rock(Opens in a new window). She told us about her 27-year career at NASA, spending 104 days in space and performing a six-hour and 39-minute spacewalk, then returning to Earth on Space Shuttle Discoverys final descent.

Whos up there now? At the time of writing, there are seven astronauts onboard(Opens in a new window), including Nicole A. Mann, the first indigenous woman from NASA to go to space.

There are also robots aboard the ISS. These Astrobee robots are designed to track radiation levels, assist in two-way communications with mission control on Earth, and keep well out of the way of astronauts running experiments.As of April 2022, the Astrobee program "has operated over 750 hours on the space station, completing over 100 activities, from tech demonstrations to assisting in experiments," NASA says(Opens in a new window).

The European robotic arm extending from the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module(Credit: NASA)

If youre an optimist, the ISS is welcome evidence that we can all play nicely together when we have common goalslike, say, the future of life itself. According to the ISS National Laboratory(Opens in a new window), 240 people from 19 countries have visited the station, which has hosted more than 3,000 research investigations from researchers in more than 100 countries.

Not a spoiler alert but, in about 5 billion years, our Sun will die(Opens in a new window), so our descendants need to be long-gone by then. In order to explore the known universe, we need to find out how to equip humans for (very) long distance travel, and learn how they can survive in (extremely) hostile environments.The ISS serves as a micro-gravity testbed for technologies that will enable this.

One of those experiments is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS)(Opens in a new window), a 7.5-ton module containing the first precision particle physics detector in space. We previously spoke with Dr. Samuel Ting, the scientist in charge of the AMS, to find out how it's been sifting space," modeling billions of cosmic rays, and looking for evidence of dark matter, all to discover the origins of the universe.

Other experiments(Opens in a new window) being conducted on the ISS range from biology and biotechnology investigations, to space science (such as experimental chrondule formation, or stardust) and evidence-based human research, including identifying genetic predispositions to physical shifts within microgravity environments.

SpaceX Crew-5 Mission Specialist Anna Kikina from Roscosmos(Credit: NASA)

The ISS was constructed in situi.e. above the Earths atmosphere. The first module launched on Nov. 20, 1998, and the first crew went up on Oct. 31, 2000. Since its inception, 16 countries have been involved, under the cooperation of five space agenciesCSA (Canada),ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), Roscosmos (Russia), and NASA (United States).

In a time of heightened conflict between major players on Earth, its remarkable that everyone involved manages to remain beyond such strife and get on with the job at hand, for the most part. That said, Russia is leaving the ISS at some point this decade, and China is currently building a space station of its own.

Blue Origin NS-22(Credit: Blue Origin)

On a sadder note, the ISS itself will be decommissioned in 2030, so its worth making time to spot it in the nights sky at least once before it goes.

Although not a short read, NASAs transition plan details(Opens in a new window) how the station will be developed for commercial use in the future, with steps being taken to develop both the supply and demand side of the low-Earth orbit commercial economy, and the technical steps and budget required for transition.

For those of us who long to be space tourists, and not just spot space stations from the ground, the transition report confirms that NASA has signed agreements with Blue Origin, Nanoracks LLC, and Northrop Grumman to develop commercial destinations in space.

Until then, look up and imagine what life will be like when we can all go into Low Earth Orbitand then where no human has gone before, boldly or otherwise.

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Just Look Up: How to Track the International Space Station - PCMag